Good Day

Have a look at the website for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This is a partnership of education, community, industry and government leaders who have heard the wake-up call to America’s citizens loud and clear. I embrace the ideas espoused by the partnership and its leaders…will you? More importantly… will our co-workers, administrators and most especially the parents of our children?

I looked at this site in conjunction with a masters level class that I am taking via the online Walden University. The professor asked us to have a look and answer a few questions about it. One of the questions was,”What information on the site surprised you?” Little on the site actually surprised me except the small number of states listed as being on-board as partners. I was especially dismayed to see that my home state, the “Old Dominion” Virginia was absent. Our civil war era breakaway brethren in West Virginia are on board but not us. I hope that will change soon and I will do my part by sharing the Partnership’s information with my colleagues and administrators as I continue to learn more about it.

I’ve checked out many of the articles and links on the site and have found them interesting and engaging. Though I don’t disagree with anything I’ve seen thus far, something did occur to me. The fact that the partnership needs to exist is proof positive that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana

I am excited that education is slowly turning to embrace competition, collaboration and communication as 21st century skills, but it isn’t really new is it? The U.S. has a long history of using these very same skills to overcome adversity and lead the world (usually) in innovation and advances in science, medicine etc. It seems to me that somewhere in the eighties our country became fat, dumb, and happy, thinking we had arrived at a permanent position at the top of the heap. We should have known that there is no permanent top of the heap and continued to work hard to be world leaders instead of becoming a nation of consumers (see Santayana quote above!). I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised… as George Bernard Shaw once said, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
The problem now is regaining that pull – together, can-do esprit de corps that shaped our past and apply it going forward using our 21st century skills that are remarkably reminiscent of our 19th and 20th century skills, (think Manhattan Project, Apple Computer, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, etc, though on a global scale).
I am very excited for my future students; because I am entering the classroom at a time when “teaching to the test” is at least very suspect, if not on its way out. It is also a time when overly done self esteem sillyisms are also being re-cast to reflect the actual world that we live in. For example “everybody is a winner” becomes “everyone wins when we work together to solve our problems” (yay!).
I think that this latest economic snafu and revelations about the greed and devil-may-care attitude of big corporate America may finally have woken up many to the idea that self-reliance and cooperation might be great things after all. What does it mean for my students and for me? It means working together to build their knowledge using the best practices available. Showing through example how competing with one’s self to be the best student is the best way to ensure readiness for the work world of the future. It also means using our classroom community to demonstrate how things get done well when people work together instead of separately.
It also means being up-front with students about how they learn. Discussing metacognition with primary grade children may seem futile to some, but even kindergarteners begin to grasp the importance of understanding how to learn not just what to learn (Partnership, n.d.). Students I have worked with have responded well to up-front discussions about using mnemonic devices and the techniques used by good readers to comprehend. Kindergarten and first grade students who can master video games through repetitious learning and through the clever application of so called “cheats” can learn to be equally adept at “working the system “of their own mind to get better results.
It also means bringing to bear all of the resources and technologies available to create a safe and comfortable learning environment where students feel free and encouraged to be creative in their work and problem solving. Higher level thinking and problem solving will be the hallmark of the highest paid workers of the future; a future that will have few middle level jobs and more highly skilled and very low skilled jobs available (Levy, 2006). It also means building bridges between home and school so parents will also feel comfortable and safe engaging their children’s education as facilitator and collaborating participant. I look forward to the challenges of teaching 21st century skills and watching as my students become empowered to change the world in which they live.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st
century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from
http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_Report.pdf

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for
twenty-first century learning: Answers to educators' questions. New
Directions for Youth Development, 2006(110), 53–62.